Once upon a time I was doing translation and contribution through
arabeyes.org. I am doing this in my very limited time. I did try to move the
translation project to a better situation and I have some good relation with
KACST (King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology). They agreed to
support the project and let me work full time on translation with other
translators for a specified time. (I haven't received a single additional
penny for this but) I was very happy that time and was eager to work
intensively to improve the translation. I send a message to arabeyes asking
for being the maintainer of KDE for one month only so I can utilize the power
under my hand better. To my surprise arabeyes refused it and let me feel as
if I am taking something from them. For the record KDE translation that time
was in a stagnancy and the maintainer is not within reach. When they felt it,
they assigned the maintainership to a very smart and good guy whom I respect
a lot (isam bayazidi). But Isam was very busy that time to the degree that
many files we translated are not committed to this minute. Arabeyes is very
conservative about changes and this has forced me to be very cautious when
speaking about maintainership again. The one who has time should be the
maintainer and Maha is completely right when she mentioned
"Free One Comes First":
Munzir .. We are not arabeyes here, and if you go through the archieve
of the mailing list, all what I went through with arabeyes to straight
the idea about maintainership and controling is not an option and should
not be accepted (At least this is my point of view). So it would not
have ever thought of that anyone should control this. It is good to have
defined team and work in an organized way , yet it is not acceptable
that someone think he control or he should control everything or else
things will not be good. Arabeyes did an initial work on this project
thankfully, yet I do not think the policy and way of handling things is
beind done right over there. After all , we did finish this translation,
and we will continoue our commited task, we will fix the translation and
provide a best practice for the Arabic Community. I have no doubt that
the team here now can do that.
I could speak more about it but let's stop here and I think you
got the idea
I want to make clear that I am not running after being a maintainer
and never feel this let's you a better man. There are more capable people
here no doubt but if they can't save more time than me, I would continue
doing it. For me, Fedora is always a priority.
It is good to stop at this point, as this is history, and I personally
prefer not to reopen it. Also, we all know that you are not after
maintainership. The min you will get busy and we need a maintainer we
can move it to someone else who has more time at a point. It seems
someone ppl miss the point, it is not about a maintainer , it is about a
team, maintainer is to co-ordinate not to control. You are doing a great
job and everyone in this group is doing great job, so let us keep this
up.
Thanks
Sherif